People often look at me like I am nuts when I say I am exhausted and say things like “You just work on a computer all day!!!” It is true that I do work on a computer, but there are many other things I do that require great mental effort. Some of the basics include:

Digesting many analytics accounts to determine what is working, what isn’t working, what needs to be addressed, what is being ignored, what the search engines are not picking up…this list goes on and on as well

Conversions – are our sites and our clients’ sites converting? Lots of time. How so or why not?

Writing and research for writing for my sites.

Constant planning or thinking about planning or researching to plan a website, marketing strategy, SEO strategy, PPC campaign and/or a combination of all of these for each client. It is like an all day thing…

What Drains the Remaining Life Out of Many of Us

Well, the above takes a large mental toll, because it is all data and analysis, but then we have much more.

Clients

The brain is tired after looking at so much and analyzing so much, but then we get to deal with difficult clients. I will tell you what we are doing to avoid these issues when I am done with the following list:

Difficult clients include those that couldn’t find a way to get us content or photos for their new website for 4-5 months (despite all of our best efforts), but then turn around and blame us for a site not being completed.

Or clients that read an article or talk to a friend and automatically question all the hard work we have done, even though it has led to success.

Clients that don’t appreciate the fact that we work our butts off for people.

Some of our strategies for avoiding this have been helpful.

If I feel like someone is going to be difficult to work with we just don’t work with them period. Sorry. If you offend me before we even speak I won’t work with you and I don’t care how much money you have.

Clients are now given dates by which we must receive photos and/or content depending on the development time of their site. This keeps the client on track and our schedule clean.

We are glad to listen to whatever clients have heard or read about SEO, online marketing, websites etc., but thankfully by keeping ourselves educated we can let them know what is wrong and what is right.

Saying goodbye to clients that make our lives miserable. Life is too short to be irritated and ticked off.

Working Late

I know many people that feed their families, get their kids to bed and then work late into the night. The brain never really gets a chance to recover or relax and despite sleep it is still drained the next day. This can go on for months…so we are tired 🙂

Social Media

In addition to all of the other responsibilities many of us in the industry must also keep up with Social Media for a variety of reasons. The two most important reasons for me are keeping up with industry related articles and having the support of others in this industry. I have built up a relationship with people that give me a little more strength and support for my day and I cherish that. However, it is yet another large task that requires time, mental energy, research and much more.

So….

If you know someone in this industry or love someone in this industry and you wanted to know why they are tired mentally and physically I hope I gave you a small hint of why. I say give them a hug, make them laugh, surprise them with Chinese food…whatever, but please understand that just because they work “on a computer” doesn’t mean they are not just as tired as everyone else. I think they are most likely more tired than most.

Melissa Fach – One Tired SEO

18 responses to “Why The SEO and Internet Marketing Industry Is So Fatiguing”

I agree 120%! Just because you’re on a computer all day doesn’t mean it won’t wear you out. It’s mentally taxing, stress doesn’t help, and most of the time the food choices one eats at the desk isn’t exactly the most healthy thing in the world.

Don’t forget how exhausting it is when a major search engine change or a dumb client move launches a full on panic attack and you’re scrambling to figure what it all means and throw together a battle plan on the fly. That’s where I really get exhausted.

This is so true – even for the in-house SEO. The stress when I worked on the agency side came from dealing with so many clients. The stress from the in-house side comes from digging in deeper and deeper and really caring about everything that happens with the site, because now this one site is my life.

Amen Melissa! Your words are so true. really.
Your words covers my whole day in nearly every detail.
Working 8 hours on clients sites and planning strategies is really tough. writing aricles and so on.
I should translate it into german and post it to all folks who says we have an easy job to do..

If this had a like button, I’d certainly push it! Sitting behind a computer and doing what we do is completely exhausting, I find that the daily dealings with Clients, the hyper vipers calling every time a little change comes through, wanting explanation, needing to know, this that and the other, is complete mental exhaustion, but for the love of the industry we push on!